Maria Helena Vieira da Silva rose to awareness in the so called Second School of Paris, a city where she lived most of her life. She was the earliest Portuguese artist to consolidate a vast international recognition, with her work represented in the most relevant collections around the world, and a dedicated museum (together with her husband, the artist Arpad Szenes) in Lisbon, the Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva Foundation.

Alert to the reality that surrounded her, Vieira da Silva had, from very early on, an active artistic stance. Her work reveals a thematic scope with a strong urban and historic-political character, involved and in dialogue with the - zeitgeist
. This painting, May of 68, was created at the time of socio-political dispute that started at the Paris-Nanterre University and spread all over France, with echoes and consequences abroad.

The May 68 movement became the symbol of the students fight in defence of a change in mentality and renewal of behaviours and values. Vieira da Silva lived with these events and this work is an icon of that time, in which the artist interprets the energy, tension and expectations of the moment in an expressive pictorial and gestural language that characterises her. The canvas space is totally explored vertically, by a horizontal metric composed of irregular strokes, dripping and colour spots that make up an abstract composition, with a geometric and rhythmic feel. The sepia and ochre colour pallet is applied in an upward way, radiating a growing luminosity in the higher part of the work. The lyric and poetic grammar of this pictorial work translates in a singular way the opening up proposed by the May 68 movement and confidence in its triumph.



AG